corn and other articles of produce.' 'That,' said Mr. Pitt, 'was in 1785, three years after her legislative independence; that was the state of Ireland.' You have seen, gentlemen, that picture. You have heard that description. You have heard that proof of the prosperity of Ireland. She then imported little more than one million's worth of English manufacture; she exported two and a half millions of linen and linen-yarn, adding to that the million of other exports. There is a picture given of her internal prosperity. Recollect that we now (1844) import largely English manufactures, and that the greatest part of the price of these manufactures consists of wages which the manufacturer gives to the persons who manufacture them. £2,500,000 worth of linen and linen-yarn were exported, and one million of other goods. Compare that with the present state of things. Does not every one of you know there is scarcely anything now manufactured in Ireland, that nearly all the manufactures used in Ireland are imported from England? I am now showing the state of Irish prosperity at the time I am talking of. I gave you the authority of Foster (no small one) and of Pitt for Irish prosperity during that time. I will give you the authority of another man that was not very friendly to the people of this country--that of Lord Clare. Lord Clare made a speech in 1798, which he subsequently published, and in which I find this remarkable passage, to which I beg leave to direct your particular attention. 'There is not,' said his lordship, 'a nation on the face of the habitable globe which has advanced in cultivation, in manufactures, with the same rapidity in the same period as Ireland' (namely, from 1782 to 1798). That was the way in which Irish legislative independence worked, and I have in support of it the evidence of Pitt, Foster, and Lord Clare; and Lord Grey, in 1799, talking of Scotland in the same years, says: 'In truth, for a period of more than forty years after the [Scottish] Union, Scotland exhibited no proofs of increased industry and rising wealth.' Lord Grey, in continuation, stated that 'till after 1748 there was no sensible advance of the commerce of Scotland. Several of her manufactures were not established till sixty years after the Union, and her principal branch of manufacture was not set up, I believe, till 1781. The abolition of the heritable jurisdictions was the first great measure that gave an impulse to the spirit of improvement in Scotland. Since that time the prosperity of Scotland has been considerable, but certainly not so great as that of Ireland has been within the same period.' Lord Plunket, in his speech in 1799, in one of his happiest efforts of oratory, speaks of her as of 'a little island, with a population of four or five millions of people, hardy, gallant, and enthusiastic, possessed of all the means of civilisation, agriculture, and commerce well pursued and understood, a Constitution fully